ANT253H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Grammatical Case, Vocal Folds, Phoneme
Document Summary
Chapter 2 notes: all languages share fundamental structures with other languages, linguistic studies these structures in a systematic fashion. This created consistency in the representation: air from the lungs can be either nasal or oral. In the larynx there are two vocal cords which can be either vibrating or taut. When they vibrate they produce voiced sounds and when they are taut the sound produced is voiceless: sounds that are made when organs touch are named with words that refer to the organ. A letter is represented by having it surrounded by /. This is called a phoneme (eg. /p/, /a/). The different sounds it produces depending on its position in a word is called allophones. There can only be one allophone for any letter being pronounced at one time. This is called complementary distribution: to identify different phonemes in a language, a commutation test is put in place.
